As people grow older, their skin loses elasticity, and their facial and neck muscles lose tone causing their face to sag. This development of sag lines characteristically occurs on both sides of the face and below the chin. Unfortunately the jowl muscle tone frequently deteriorates. This is particularly true with elderly persons and those who are corpulent and/or sedentary; but is also known to occur in slender persons as they grow older. Some of the facial areas that are most affected are the muscles of the lower face, particularly the chin and areas beneath the chin, including those of the neck and mores especially, the tissues and jowl muscles in the sides and front of the neck. These facial/neck region frequently develop sag areas between the center of the chin and the outer areas of the frontal neck. These muscle/tissue deteriorations are akin to atrophy and signal aging in most people.
There is, therefore, a real need to develop the muscles in these areas without requiring use of heavy weights so that sedentary people and those of advanced years can exercise and tone these muscles to look younger, feel better, and in general convey an impression of being younger than their chronological age.
There have been numerous efforts in the prior art to provide for exercising the lower anatomical structural areas of the body, viz., below the neck particularly both upper and lower extremities, viz., shoulders, arms and legs, the chest and back muscles, and stomach muscles. Unfortunately, however, there are few devices tailor made for exercising and toning facial and neck muscles.
U.S. Pat. No. 3,912,263, issued to Stephen John Yatso, is directed to an exercising machine comprising an upright frame providing generally vertical tracks, each having two oppositely facing channels; a carriage movable upwardly and downwardly along the tracks and having two vertically spaced wheels in each channel; a stack of weights carried by the frame below the carriage; an upright selector post extending between the weights and the carriage and extending through holes in the weights and provided with vertically spaced apertures; lower connecting means for connecting a selected number of the weights to the post, comprising a lower pin engageable with a selected one of the weights and insertable into a selected one of the apertures in the post; upper connecting means for connecting the carriage to the post at any one of a plurality of vertically spaced positions, comprising an upper pin engageable with the carriage and insertable into a selected one of the apertures in the post; a handle bar pivotally connected to the carriage for upward and downward pivotal movement relative thereto; and means for locking the handle bar against pivotable movement relative to the carriage in any of a plurality of vertically spaced positions.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,691,916, issued to Harvey C. Voris, is directed to an exercise apparatus having a trolley directly linked to the resistance weights. Bearings on the trolley react against the eccentric component of an applied force, while a selector bar connecting the trolley with the weights interacts with th weight stack to keep the trolley bearings in continuous contact with the upright guide rods on which the trolley and weights ride when the user withdraws his controlled grip of the press bar or the lat pull down bar removing any externally applied force.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,951,943, issued to Douglas W. Farenholtz, is directed to a training and exercise device for applying a force against a resisting force and includes an upstanding frame, a rotatable arm supported by the frame and for rotation about the frame in a horizontal plane and force receiving device communicating with the arm for receiving force applied by a user. The force receiving device is longitudinally slidable along the arm to cause force to be applied against the resisting force when the force receiving device is pushed horizontally along the arm toward the frame. A grasping device is attached to the second end of the cable. The force receiving device is attached to the cable at the point between the second pulley and the third pulley.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,153,244, issued to Carl F. Tauber, Jr., is directed to a gymnastic set for wheelchair patients, which is lightweight and portable and has a specific apparatus for exercising muscles in the fingers, wrists, arms, ankles, neck, back, thighs, shoulders, and other parts of the body. The framework of tubular members surrounds the wheelchair on its two sides and the back. A portion of the tubular framework extends upward above the wheelchair to carry arm exercising devices on weighted cables. Other exercising devices for the hands are mounted on the side rails of the framework and for the arms across the main upright stanchions of the overhead framework. A framework of tubular members is clipped to the main frame to extend in front of the wheelchair with leg exercise bars on weighted cables set into the clipped-on framework. Other special exercising features are said to be included. The gymnastic equipment is adjustable to fit variations in patient stature. A helmet (100), is provided for exercising neck muscles of the patient. This helmet has a chin strap and the neck muscles are apparently subjected to exercise due to the springs (102), which radiate outwardly from the helmet (100) in a fashion similar to the spokes of a wheel with respect to ring (92) which surrounds the helmet. See FIGS. 4 and 5 of the Tauber, Jr. patent.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,537,393, issued to Richard J. Kusch, is directed to a device designed to aid in exercising the various muscles of the human body, especially the muscles of the neck region, but also the muscles of the back, side, and stomach regions. The Kusch device comprises a ring supported from a wall by brackets, a plurality of bracket members rotatably mounted on the ring and springs attached to the rotatable bracket members and also the head harness positioned in the center of the diameter of the ring.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,645,198, issued to Frederick M. Levenston, is directed to a neck exercising device including an upright frame means capable of surrounding the upright torso of a human being, including a pair of handle means for manually gripping the frame means, a plurality of weighted objects, a plurality of flexible ropes, one end of each of the ropes being securable to one of the weighted objects, guide means secured to the frame means for guiding each of the plurality of ropes, means for securing the ropes to the weighted objects, and means for securing the attached ends of the ropes to the head of the person using the neck exerciser. The Levenston neck exercising device is so constructed as to be usable while the exerciser is standing in the upright position only.